📺 Los Angeles news 24/7: Watch NBC4 free wherever you arePart of that comes from worldwide inflation, an ongoing problem since the pandemic started. Jet fuel costs, roughly a third of all airline expenses, remain high. Meanwhile, a global push for the aviation industry to decarbonize has more carriers fighting for the little amount of so-called sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, available in the market.
The Emirates’ results track with those for its base, Dubai International Airport. The world’s busiest airport for international travelers had 86.9 million passengers last year, surpassing numbers for 2019 just before the coronavirus pandemic grounded global aviation. Tim Clark, the airline's president, obliquely acknowledged that Monday by saying that he didn't want people to “get boxes of tissues out and play the violins” when warning that the industry's profit margins sit in the low single digits. However, he contended that as airlines have grown larger and carriers consolidated, cost savings have quietly been passed onto consumers now able to book flights across the world.